I don't get it. I just don't. First of all, the game is NOTHING like what was originally presented/promised to us, but I guess that is neither here nor there. When I first started this game I was thrilled with the campaign map, the heroes, the superb graphics and music, but as I play deeper, I find that other than the hero missions the game is simplistic and frustrating.

I was just curious what some of the rest of you thought. I am still on the Rohan missions, so perhaps I havent played long enough, but the basic RTS missions so far have just not been good. The unit balance is WAY off, the number and type of structures you can build is far too limited, upgrades are too expensive, and then Mordor forces can tear you apart with only one unit-the pikemen with the glowy red thing.

Anyways, guess I am just dissapointed so far, back to ground control 2 for a while.

Ok thank you for saying too difficult. I consider myself well above average playing these types of games, and i found the game just stupidly difficult unless you used 1 or 2 very specific tactics or cheesed the enemy pikemen to death with wall towers. Ugh, I do enjoy the fellowship missions but....

I feel the same way man. I do really well at most games, but most of the missions (granted I didn't get far in this one) are just insane. If I had continued on, I would have had to use the unit # tweak, just to make it fair, let alone fun.

I love it. However I find it too easy. I played the good campaign on normal, and i breezed through that. Now I'm playing the Evil campaign and put it on hard, and while it's a bitter harder than normal, I'm still not being challenged.

It's a paper/rock/scissor type of game, every unit has a strength and weakness to it.

Today my bro and I played online (where the game really shines) and I got my ass kicked. He ranks 112 in the 1on1 ladders and he wanted to try something out on me. He told me he would only build hero units and that's it. I took him on. I had a 400 unit cap. I lost sad to say 400 troops to his 5 heroes. It was simply amazing how he did it. He just picks and stabs and then retreat, only to gain unit experience. Then as he gets higher he becomes more powerful. Eventually he had the undead army and game was over.

My bro is a champ at RTS games. He beats me at everything, doesn't matter which game. I had BFME for 2 weeks before him, hoping I'd get the advantage, my first game, I lost. However I did beat him once, and I was happy

I like this game over Warhammer mainly due to the atmosphere. Both games have huge weaknesses, (warhammer having an uninvolved story line, and being repetitive, while BFME having an easy campaign and unit/hero balancing issues)

The game is quite pretty and sounds great, but gameplay is devoid of anything to make it stand out. It's boring and bland, but considering the publisher that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. They've released a number of titles based on the LOTR license already, and all of them have been pretty mediocre so far, in my opinion.

EA is the Hollywood-corporation of the gaming industry. They have a checklist of what people want, and they pay people to make sure most points on it exist as features in their releases. They have no soul and zero passion. Almost every single game they release reflect this.

On my first run through the game, I chose the side of Good at Normal difficulty. Absolutely loved the game until I reached Helm's Deep. I looked up several strategies and tried them all, only to lose every time. The computer just made too many troops too fast to effectively deal with them. Even holding out 'till the Rohirrim showed up didn't help. Seeing many complaints about the difficulty only getting worse after Helm's Deep, I hacked the archers and heroes at that point, and breezed through the rest of the game.

My second run through, I chose the side of Evil at Easy difficulty. I didn't cheat this time, as the game was far too easy. The only time I approached having trouble was the Mordor missions, as they have no good scouting/shock troops, no heroes, and minimal upgrades. In essence, they suck.

Once it was time to attack Minis Tirith, I did it with Lurtz' army of 8 pikemen/archer battallions, 30 warg riders and Lurtz, all fully upgraded and level 10. I concentrated on seige equipment at first, taking out the catapults on the walls and using Grond to knock down the door. I rushed everyone in, destroying building as they went, but for every filthy human or elf I killed two more seemed to pop up. Then Rohan arrived and I had nobody outside Minis Tirith to protect my camps, all of which were lost, save the outpost I'd forgotten to build any structures at. As Rohan's forces came into the city, I wiped them out while fending off Gondor's seemingly inexhaustible supply of troops. My numbers were dwindling fast. I revived Lurtz via the overlooked Outpost and sent him to reclaim and rebuild my camps, this time with Orc pits. The camps were up and running just in time for Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to show up with the Oathbreakers. "Gimme a fuckin' break," I lamented to the screen. And it did. The Oathbreakers fell fast to the towers surrounding the camps. Who knew? After wiping out the heroes, I began manufacturing orcs and orc archers in a continuous stream directly into Minis Tirith, destroying the pesky last few buildings I couldn't attack for fear of losing my troops already inside. When all was said and done, the only survivors from my initial army were 3 battalions of pikemen/archers. And each of them had dwindled to a ragtag few in each group.

The set-piece battles in this game are tons of fun. The missions in between get repetitive fairly quickly and are mostly forgettable. The difficulty scales horribly from Easy to Normal, which forces a specific style of gameplay in order to win (rush the map). Multiplayer has been fun the few times I've played, but they were all private games with my little brother. Once the initial excitement wears off, you're left with a mediocre RTS with great sound/visual production quality (attention to detail is excellent) and some great set-pieces. In short, a great bargain-bin title or trade, but probably not going to make many happy at full price.

Hey,I am a big LotR fan. I thought the movies did a great job of capturing the essence of the books. I have of course played every LotR game since the C-64 days. This game comes the closest in my opinion to giving you the feel of the LotR world.

Graphics,music, interface, actor voices from the movies all top notch.

The game is fun to play and the interactive map and cut scenes in the plantir, brilliant.

There are a few annoying control problems that really detract from this almost stellar game.

1) There is no "lock-on" feature allowing you to follow your selected unit. This destroys the immersion factor by making you resort to arrow keys to follow the action. What were they thinking. Obviously not much.

2) There is no "tilt feature" so all your battle views are up above, you never really get down to the battle field. This leaves you always as a spectator. Another stupid decision.

3) Game play balance needs tweaking. Combinig units is useless.

The lock-on and tilt camera features so evident in Rome Total War, Ground Control 1 and 2 and many other RTS games should not have been left out.

For those of you who thought it was easy playing Good campaign on normal, how did you do it?

After the 5th mission, I would get raided at the very beginning of the level with about 100 orcs/goblins, who would decimate my forces from the previous mission. Archers were so slow that they would get to fights 10 minutes late, or get hacked from behind, and horse riders would just sit there and not attack, even when I did an attack-move. How did you all over come this?

I love it. However I find it too easy. I played the good campaign on normal, and i breezed through that. Now I'm playing the Evil campaign and put it on hard, and while it's a bitter harder than normal, I'm still not being challenged.

It's a paper/rock/scissor type of game, every unit has a strength and weakness to it.

Today my bro and I played online (where the game really shines) and I got my ass kicked. He ranks 112 in the 1on1 ladders and he wanted to try something out on me. He told me he would only build hero units and that's it. I took him on. I had a 400 unit cap. I lost sad to say 400 troops to his 5 heroes. It was simply amazing how he did it. He just picks and stabs and then retreat, only to gain unit experience. Then as he gets higher he becomes more powerful. Eventually he had the undead army and game was over.

My bro is a champ at RTS games. He beats me at everything, doesn't matter which game. I had BFME for 2 weeks before him, hoping I'd get the advantage, my first game, I lost. However I did beat him once, and I was happy

I like this game over Warhammer mainly due to the atmosphere. Both games have huge weaknesses, (warhammer having an uninvolved story line, and being repetitive, while BFME having an easy campaign and unit/hero balancing issues)

See I'm definately calling shenanigans on this.I am by no means the master your bro is, but I always hold my own in online RTS games, and I breeze through just about every RTS I play without issue on medium or hard. I cannot and will not say that I am not a competent player because BFME is strangely difficult. From the mixture of posts in this thread the only conclusion I can come to is that there is some sort of "trick" or "puzzle" element to the unit buildup that a few of us simply do not get.

Either way, I agree with Leo who said "clunky, slow, difficult, and unresposive."

Oh yeah, Naednek, when you characterize Warhammer as having and UNINVOLVED story line, it makes me wonder if you have actually played that game. That is simply preposterous-DOW has one of the most engaging, well presented stories since WCIII.

Count me in for one who is enjoying this game. I've only done the first 4 missions, but I bought it more for the multiplayer. I have three friends I regularly game with and all of us had a blast playing it together online last week.

I went through Helm's Deep my first try. Legolas managed some 600 kills by just standing on the lower wall after it had been breached. Him, two groups of archers, and the other heroes guarding the steps.

No enemies ever even made it into the castle itself.

Once the Rohirrim arrived, I steamrolled the camps towards the bottom of the map.

yes I played and finished the game. You can ask orpheo, duroudx (or however his name is spelled), vidiot, and Kaigen. If you want me to post spoilers on the weak story, I'll do it, if I have to prove to you I know what I'm talking about. Not only did it have a weak story, the voice acting was atrocious, probably one of the worst I've seen.

It's called opinions. I didn't say the game was bad, I said I thought BFME was better. I'm sorry you don't agree. BFME isn't perfect by no means, however I'm having more fun with it. Both games do nothing new, both games have a weak single player element, but out of the two, I like BFME more.

If you hover your mouse over the unit build icon (go to your unit building (different on each race) and hover your mouse over the unit you want to build. It will tell you what that unit is weak against, and what they are great at. If I remember correctly, archers are good against them.

I have to say that DoW's story was pretty weak also. I mean it's solid, but it's way way way way under par for what I know Relic can produce. I personally think it's pretty sad that no one has beaten Starcraft yet (even WCIII was a basic rehash of Starcraft's basic plot... though a very well done rehash).

However, if Relic spent maybe 3-4 (I'd prefer 7-8) more missions building up the story (or at the very least giving it a decent conclusion), I might change my mind on it. I keep thinking that they cock-blocked the sp campaign on purpose, to drive sales for the expansion (which is obviously in the works).

Voice acting? Yeah it stinks. Orks are the hands down best of them. Space Marines second best. I can't quite pick which one is worse, CSM or Eldar... But they are both pretty bad.

I can't say I have a neutral POV though. I haven't even touched BFME and my complete disgust for EA means I probably won't ever touch it (maybe in demo form).

I have to say that DoW's story was pretty weak also. I mean it's solid, but it's way way way way under par for what I know Relic can produce. I personally think it's pretty sad that no one has beaten Starcraft yet (even WCIII was a basic rehash of Starcraft's basic plot... though a very well done rehash).

However, if Relic spent maybe 3-4 (I'd prefer 7-8) more missions building up the story (or at the very least giving it a decent conclusion), I might change my mind on it. I keep thinking that they cock-blocked the sp campaign on purpose, to drive sales for the expansion (which is obviously in the works).

Voice acting? Yeah it stinks. Orks are the hands down best of them. Space Marines second best. I can't quite pick which one is worse, CSM or Eldar... But they are both pretty bad.

I can't say I have a neutral POV though. I haven't even touched BFME and my complete disgust for EA means I probably won't ever touch it (maybe in demo form).

I beat Starcraft. Brood War too, although I had to cheat for that one.

I'm shocked that you guys didn't like the story and voice acting in DoW. Aside from Starcraft and Warcraft, it's the best RTS story I've come across. I also thought the voice acting was superb.

I consider myself very good in RTS, top of the crop (mainly because i was one of the best in AOC online.) This game is amazingly unbalanced, someone mentioned about heroes owning his 400 unit army, thats not surprise because they so overpowered. Legolas alone can hold whole army, i have done it numerous time, add Gimly or Aragorn to him and they become unstopable. Rohan owns Mordor , Mordor and the other good side are about even , everyone owns Isengard. Other good side draws with rohan cause they cant do shit outside of walls to rohan , and rohan cant brake walls .

Few fire Trechebuts on the wall its all over for rohan. Dont tell me, i missed on fire resistant trents. I am not talking about Rohans wall that sucks, i am talking about THe second good civ (then name escapes me), i once had 5 catapults of mordor pounding same section of the wall, and if it was 4 it wasnt going down since he can turn on repair at any time, so i needed 5 and about 5+ min to take wall down, and then once i did took down that section, all my guys got masacred by towers, barely reacing the walls, Nazguls get raped too. Then he repaired walls. Ofcourse you can say get the Mordors last summon, the only thing is , if the guy walled in and doesnt come out, the acumulation of points is so F-Slow, that game itself was already over an hour and it would take me about this much to accumulate enough points to summon it, since all he did was defendin the walls. Yah sooner or later i would win, but why would i want to play a game where idea of fun is have a castle that next to untakable and Heroes (ROHAN) is all you need for an army. Which ever way you look at it its unbalanced. I am surprised there is people who actualy play multiplayer competitevly in this excuse for multiplayer game.

I just sold my copy on Ebay and went back to playing Warcraft III. The evil campaign was interesting but the rest of the game was boring and nothing like I hoped it would be. Evil C&C Generals IMO was better than this. The skirmish AI needed a lot of work too.

Logged

"A gladiator does not fear death. He embraces it. Caresses it. Fucks it. Every time he enters the arena, he slides his cock into the mouth of the beast."